HEAVEN SWORD DRAGON SABRE Book 2 of 2

The Three Withered Pine Trees Sprouting Green Leaves Part 5

With a dry laugh Du Jie said, "Fortunate meeting, fortunate meeting! Let's see how well Shaolin disciples compete against them." The three black ropes shook; they soared like three China-ink black dragons and formed three layers of loops around their opponents.

Last night, when Zhang Wuji battled these three monks, he could not even see his own fingers, so he had to rely on the aura of the black ropes to determine the direction of the incoming weapons. This time, it was the beginning of the seventh hour [between 11am – 1pm]; the sun was shining brightly in the sky that he was able to see clearly every wrinkle on the faces of the three monks. Reversing the Sheng Huo Ling tablets in his hands, he cupped his fists and bowed. "Please forgive my offense," he said, and immediately attacked sideways.

Yang Xiao flew toward his left. With a loud shout Yin Tianzheng raised the Sheng Huoling in his right hand to strike the black rope in Du Nan's hand. A dull clanking noise was heard as the rope and the tablet collided. These two weapons were so strange that the noise generated when they struck each other also sounded weird. Both men's hands were shaken, and both exclaimed inwardly, "Very fierce!" They both realized that they were facing a formidable opponent, which they seldom meet in their lifetimes.

Zhang Wuji thought, "The three monks' black ropes are connected together to form a loop. Their defense is very tight. Although the three of us join hands, we might not necessarily be able to make a breakthrough within three to five hundred stances. We'd better try to exhaust the three monks' energy, then slowly look for a flaw." Seeing the black rope coil over his way, he used the Sheng Huo Ling to take the brute force head on with brute force.

Fighting for the time needed to cook rice, Zhang Wuji, three people managed to press forward and reduce the loop diameter a 'zhang' or so. However, as the three monks' loop was getting smaller, their defensive power increased. Each step the three attackers took required several folds of effort from the previous ones. As the battle progressed, Yang Xiao and Yin Tianzheng were more astonished than ever.

At first, the battle was three against three, but after about an hour, Yang and Yin, two people gradually could not hold their ground. In the end, the two of them fought Du Nan; while Zhang Wuji had to deal with Du E and Du Jie, two monks, alone.

Yin Tianzheng always took the 'hard' and 'ferocious' approach. Yang Xiao, on the other hand, sometimes used 'soft', sometimes 'hard'; his fighting style kept changing. Among these six combatants, Yang Xiao's martial art was the most attractive to look at. The two Sheng Huo Ling tablets in his hands circled around and danced in the air; sometimes it became a sword, suddenly it changed into a saber. Sometimes he thrust it forward like a short spear, next time it struck, coiled, slapped, and then changed into a judge's pen; poking, pressing down, jerking up, and then the one in his left hand changed into a dagger, while the one in his right changed into an awl [(?) Translator's note: I don't know what kind of weapon this is. The original was 'shui3 ci4' 水刺 – 'water thorn']. Suddenly the one in his right hand changed into a steel whip, while the one in his left a crowbar. Within these hundreds of changes, he struck the two tablets to each other, creating a 'ya ya' [This is the transliteration of the Chinese characters, don't ask me what kind of noise is this.] sound, disturbing the enemy's concentration. Before they even fought for four hundred stances, the tablets had changed into twenty-two different weapons; with each weapon incorporating two sets of styles, so altogether he had used forty-four different sets of styles.

Kong Zhi had mastered eleven out of Shaolin Pai's seventy-two unique skills; while almost no martial art skills in the world eluded Fan Yao's knowledge, but at this moment watching Yang Xiao deftly launch his divine skills, both of them could not help but inwardly sigh with admiration.

Zhou Dian had never been in good terms with Yang Xiao. The two of them had fought each other several times. But this moment, the longer Zhou Dian watched, the more ashamed he was. "Turn out this son of a turtle Yang Xiao has always yielded to me," he mused, "I knew his martial art skill was somewhat higher than mine, and I thought each time we fought, he was just lucky that he won by one stance or half a style. Who would have thought that I, Zhou Dian, actually inferior by one big peg to this son of a turtle."